Although new building materials and building methods have been introduced in the past decades, traditional building bricks are still used and valued. A disadvantage of ordinary building bricks is however that the insulating value is mediocre, which with increasing cost of energy and focus on environment is a major disadvantage. Different attempts have been made to improve the insulation value of building bricks.
At present there are several types of insulated building bricks available on the market. One of these bricks is the Unipor Coriso, which is a brick filled with mineral granulate, and an example of a mineral wool filled brick is known under the trade name MZ8 from Mein Ziegelhaus. Other examples include bricks with a filling of perlite (e.g. Poroton-T8/-T9 from Wienerberger).
Patent literature does also include different concepts for insulated building bricks. One example can be found in GB Patent No. 461,314, which relates to a brick filled with an insulating filling, such as glass wool. This is a traditional building brick filled with traditional insulation materials at the time of filing of this patent more than 80 years ago, and this brick does not meet the demands for modern building bricks in terms of insulation properties and is not suited for mass production.
A more modern example is the building brick according to EP 1 752 593 A2. This building brick has a substantially cubic body comprising a plurality of cavities divided by walls and filled with insulating filling. This prior art building brick does provide state of the art insulation properties, but cannot meet future demands on insulation properties, and further is not perfectly suited for mass production.
DE 20 2007 013 074 U1 discloses vacuum insulation panels having very high insulation value. The vacuum insulation panel comprises a micro-porous core material e.g. a silica-aerogel, possibly with reinforcing fibres, such as inorganic fibres e.g. mineral wool fibres. The core material is arranged in a wrapping, evacuated and provided with an air-tight metal casing, such as an aluminium foil. It is mentioned, but not otherwise supported that the panels can be mounted in cavities of a hollow brick. The resulting brick has a high insulation value, but it is, however, an expensive solution and not suited for mass production. Further the vacuum insulation panel is fragile and subject to damage during mounting in the relatively narrow cavities of a hollow brick. The wrapping and film could for example easily be scratched, whereby the vacuum would be lost and the insulation properties reduced. Such likely damages to the insulation panel will destroy or reduce the insulation properties of the brick. Conventionally such vacuum insulation panels are filled with aerogel for the aerogel to function as an air-absorbent, which will, however, reduce the insulation value of the panel over time.